About

Past Issues Of Wildflower Magazine

Wildflower is published quarterly by the Wildflower Center. Its content is national in scope with articles about the conservation and use of native plants as well as news from the Wildflower Center. A subscription is provided to Wildflower Center members as a benefit of membership.

Letter from the Editor - Fall 2013

Magazine Milestone

THIRTY JUST MAY BE THE NEW 20 – if you take Wildflower magazine, for
example. Launched as a newsletter after the National Wildflower Research Center's founding
in 1982, this issue marks the start of Wildflower ’s 30th year. Judging by this issue –
which introduces winners of the magazine’s fourth-annual photography contest operated
completely online – the magazine seems younger than ever.

Wildflower began as a four-page, one-color newsletter when a
tiny staff at the Center’s first location in East Austin knew they
needed to communicate with a growing membership. Lady Bird
Johnson would pen letters to an undoubtedly
adoring membership herself, and the publication
drew upon information from its national
clearinghouse of articles and fact sheets to
profile wildflowers and native plants.

Even when small, it’s obvious the publication
was produced with care out of respect
for its necessity in helping the Center tell its
evolving story. This care was honored in 1990
when Wildflower won the Clarion Award, a
national award from the Association for
Women in Communications, as the best
nonprofit newsletter. Wildflower newsletter
then saw the Center through the biggest event in its history: a move
to a new location in southwest Austin. More change came when the
National Wildflower Research Center was officially renamed the
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1998.

As the Center grew and changed, so did the membership
publication. That same year and under executive director Robert
Breunig’s leadership, Wildflower was transformed from a
newsletter to a magazine and renamed Native Plants. The magazine
then had 32 pages within which to tell stories
about its Landscape Restoration Program
founded in 1999 and Plant Conservation program
in 2001.

In 2002, the Center celebrated its 20th
anniversary, opened its Ann and O.J. Weber
Butterfly Garden, and I became the magazine’s
editor. Over the nearly 12 years that followed,
Native Plants took back the name Wildflower and
continued to be an essential part of communicating
with you, the Center’s members.

Those of us involved in making this magazine
followed two simple rules: make each one better
than the last and make sure we have our facts straight. We think
that Wildflower is as important as Mrs. Johnson and a tiny
Center staff thought it was 30 years ago. And we hope you join
us in thinking it’s better than ever.